NGC 6272

NGC 6272

NGC 6272 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Hercules about 489 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 80,000 ly, about 80% of our Milky Way's width. It is receding from us at about 10,536 km/s.

Illustration from its catalogued shape, not a photograph

Spiral
type · Sa
489 million ly
from Earth · from redshift
80k ly
across
15.5
apparent magnitude
10,536 km/s
receding (RC3)

Because its light is 489 million ly from home, you are seeing NGC 6272 as it looked roughly 489 million years ago. The photons left before that much of history had passed, and are only now reaching us. This distance is estimated from the galaxy's redshift, so the lookback time is approximate.

Nearest galaxies
NGC 6269Elliptical2.9 million ly
apart
NGC 6271Elliptical3.7 million ly
apart
NGC 6261Lenticular5.1 million ly
apart
NGC 6263Elliptical8.2 million ly
apart
IC 4630Lenticular14 million ly
apart
NGC 6282Barred spiral17 million ly
apart
Worlds in the same direction on the sky

Source: structural data (position, morphology, brightness, redshift) from OpenNGC (CC BY-SA). Recession velocity from RC3 (de Vaucouleurs et al. 1991, via NASA/HEASARC, public domain). Distance computed by gravityfinder from redshift via Hubble's law (H0 = 70 km/s/Mpc).

← all galaxies